David Durham - Pride of Carthage

“In any event, the Council will know my mind and they will be swayed by it,” Hannibal continued. “Though I've been away from home too many years, I still know my people. My message will, by the gods' grace, fly past the Roman envoy and find a home in the hearts of our countrymen. That's my will. Let us see it fulfilled.” So saying, he placed his stamp upon the scroll. Mago rolled and wrapped it safely and passed it on to a messenger, who was waiting at the mouth of the tent.

It seemed that Hannibal was on the verge of dismissing Mago, but he delayed him a little longer. He ran a hand down the ridge of his nose, and opened his fingers across his lower face as if he would capture the heat of his breath. “Mago, write me another letter. As with everything that passes between us, this correspondence is not to be spoken of. Perhaps this woman is my weakness, brother, and if that is so I would have none but yourself know it.”

He hesitated for a moment after Mago was ready, and there was some reluctance in his voice when he spoke again. “Dearest Imilce . . .”

Sapanibal was as much a Barca as any of her brothers. She had Hannibal's deep-set eyes, Hanno's stature and wide forehead, Hasdrubal's shapely mouth, and Mago's sensitive mind. Like all her siblings, her younger sister Sophonisba included, she had been raised to serve the family's interests. Her marriage to Hasdrubal the Handsome had done just that, creating a bond stronger than mere pledges and promises. In this her sacrifice was as earnest as if she had dedicated her life to war; Sapanibal had endured her task with the same dedication expected of her brothers. Perhaps this was why she had been out of sorts of late. What was required of her was no longer certain. Her husband had been dead some years now and therefore no longer a tool through which to exert influence. None of the children he had planted in her had lived more than a few months inside her, so she could not focus herself on motherhood. Her brothers were always busy with warcraft, in which she could take no official role. And then there was Imilce, who now commanded Hannibal's attention in a way that Sapanibal felt was gradually, inevitably, replacing the influence she might once have exerted.

A late summer morning found her walking the meandering path into the woodland of New Carthage, a small square of dense trees, aged giants trapped within the city's granite walls. The same architecture that protected these chosen few had grown wealthy at the expense of the miles and miles of forest once thick outside the gates. With the price of fine lumber rising, the wood standing in New Carthage was a great luxury, which had been protected during the governance of her husband. It was rumored that his forbearance sprang not from an interest in nature, but to please a concubine of whom he was particularly enamored. For this it was called the Whore's Wood, a name Sapanibal was quite fond of. She had long ago ceased to take offense at Hasdrubal's infidelities. He had been a man, and men showed their prime weakness in giving in to the hungers of the groin. Anyway, the whore in question had been sharing Hasdrubal's bed on the night he was assassinated. She died in Sapanibal's place, her chest and abdomen speckled with stab wounds, just like her lover's. Baal had a sense of humor after all.

She found a certain peace and calm beneath the cloak of interwoven branches, inhaling the dampness of the place. Who could help but stand in awe of the towering columns of oak and spruce, with ferns thick around the legs and the leaves above stirred by breezes little felt upon the ground? Though she never spoke of it to anyone, she had occasionally slept in the woods. Stretching her body out on the mossy floor, eyes closed, she had listened as the natural world shifted around her. It was a rare, private pleasure, the only time she felt truly herself because it was the only time she truly forgot herself.

She spotted Imilce, her maid, and their guard before they were aware of her, waiting as had been arranged by messenger a few hours earlier. She slowed her pace and watched them a moment. Sitting on stools that servants must have placed for them, they were dwarfed by the trees, both the many standing and one great beast that had fallen two years before. It was thicker than either woman was tall. It ran behind them like a wall thrown down by the forest itself. Strange, Sapanibal thought, that a race of creatures who built such enormous structures could themselves look like insects before the mute girth of nature.

“Good Imilce,” she called as she walked into the clearing, “forgive me for asking to meet you here. It's just that I never begin a day without a walk in the forest, and I thought how pleasant it would be for you to share it with me. Come walk with me a little. I will be your guide to the Whore's Wood.”

Imilce rose and nodded to her maid; they fell in step with her sister-in-law. Imilce's body had a lithe, supple quality that contrasted sharply with Sapanibal's stride. Though Sapanibal was well dressed, her hair neatly woven into braids, and her ears adorned with silver loops, still she was a goose leading a swan and she knew it. She felt it keenly despite herself and hid it through banter. The wood was full of life and she told Imilce all about it as they walked.

The ear-piercing calls of tropical birds—flamboyant creatures of bright greens and reds, some of solid white, big-beaked and absurd by design—cut the air in cacophonic waves. They were not native to the forest but were replenished each year, kept in place by clipped wings and the barren stretch of treeless land around the city. The parrots were not the only foreigners. A troop of monkeys lived within the forest. They had been imported from Africa, tiny-faced and long-limbed and so agile as to defy possibility. They called to each other and threw insults down upon the intruders. Sapanibal pulled dates from a pouch attached to her waist chain and hurled them one by one into the trees. This brought more cries. The monkeys jumped from limb to limb and snatched the fruit out of midair. They shadowed the women until they reached the edge of the wood and stepped out onto the close-cropped field that ran away a short distance to the city's wall.

Sapanibal lowered herself and sat with her legs crossed before her, straight-backed. “We are a strange people,” she said, pointing to a small group of creatures near a crook in the wall. From a distance they looked like horses, but there was something different in their movements and colorings. Zebras. “There are some who would make New Carthage a pen for all things exotic, people or jewels or animals. In truth, it sometimes seems to me that my brother succeeds not because of Carthage but despite it. This extravagance will be our downfall if anything is. Did you know, Imilce, that once a merchant named Sastanu traveled from Carthage with two fully grown giraffes? He called them wedding presents for Hasdrubal and me. One died of fever; the other bit a guard in the backside and found the artery in her throat sliced by his sword.”

Imilce was still considering the prospect of settling down on the grass. Eventually, reluctantly, she did so. “I had not heard that before. I'd quite like to see a giraffe. Are they really so tall as they say?”

Sapanibal, though she had opened the topic, grew impatient with it. “Yes, you could walk upright beneath the belly of one with room to spare. But I've not come to talk of such things. I bring you a message, sister-in-law, from my brother.”

“My husband?”

Sapanibal reached inside the loose folds of her gown and produced a small, tightly rolled scroll. “It seems the siege goes on, slow as the summer and not nearly as pleasant.”

“You have read the letter?”

Sapanibal looked at her dryly. “I've not read it, sister. Much mail comes through me, and this I thought I'd deliver to you rather than hand it off to another.”